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Setting Up Windows Service Dependencies – Oracle XE Example

Did you ever need a Windows service to startup, but only after other services are running? The LiveCycle Turnkey installation creates a dependency so that MySQL starts before JBoss. What if your application requires another DB such as Oracle XE to be running first?

Unfortunately, Oracle XE does not install this dependency, so that if you setup the Oracle XE DB to automatically start (the default installation), everything will be running, but you can’t access the XE DB. This can happen when the DB starts up before the TNS Listener, so that the TNS Listener doesn’t realize there’s a database running.

This Knowledge Base Article from Microsoft http://support.microsoft.com/kb/193888 describes how to do setup these dependencies, but the text does not match up with what I see in Windows 2003 EE R2, so I have attached some screen shots.

Create a new Multi-String Value, by right-clicking on the background in the folder’s contents

Change the name of the value to “DependOnService”

Edit the value (right-click and select modify) and add the services that should be started before this one. You need to enter the service name exactly as it appears in the Windows Services application. For Oracle XE, it is the “OracleXETNSListener” service.